Building A Mystery

After waking up for days so aching I could barely move, and not getting a whole lot done, yesterday turned out more constructive than usual. Once I finished arm-wrestling my new CD/DVD writer into actually writing all my "uptempo" songs to a playable MP3 disk (which took hours of experimentation, 4 kinds of media, 2 software programs...) I took it into my weights room and turned it on, sat on my recline bench to the music and thought about the room a little more.

Big dolls and some stuffed animals belonging to the kid were stuffed in the corner and on the floor along the wall. There was various 'stuff and junk' stashed here and there; the room's been "the extra room" for awhile after all. A rickety wire shelf held the DVD and VCR that attached to the TV up on the wall swing-arm, and all the wires looked kinda messy. The weight cage still sat in a dozen pieces in the corner, its bag of hardware forlornly dropped by it. I thought of all my daydreaming about the room.

After sitting there for awhile, I suddenly had the realization -- I know this sounds stupidly obvious -- that not one damn thing is going to get done in my life unless I do it. I've spent so long paying someone to help me with my house, because I wasn't physically able to do much, that I think I've kind of forgotten that I am not helpless. Or rather, I am considerably less helpless right now than I was even a week ago, let alone a year ago.

I'm suddenly realizing how much of my surroundings I've been chronically unhappy with because changing them meant paying someone money to help me, and most stuff is time consuming. I'm always daydreaming of the time when something won't be a disaster or all cluttered and stacked, but there never comes a time when all that is done, because there's just too much; more grows while I'm paying for the first thing. If I wasn't decently employed my house would probably be a danger. I want to do more now. I want to get stuff DONE and make my world like I want it to be.

So with all this awesome pounding fast music, from the early 70's to the present, from hard rock to disco to alternative rock to driving country to latin beats (I love the Gypsy Kings!), I got inspired. FIRST, I had to put together my weight cage. Whoever did it last time, I think my ex, actually did it wrong, and left 'some' pieces together, which made figuring it out easier said than done, and in the end I literally got part of it upside down, as it could not have been done any other way based on the pieces still connected, but by that time I wasn't going to change it -- it works fine. It took me a couple solid hours and I was sweating hard with all the squatting and manually bolting and moving the whole thing around. It felt good. I felt like a mechanic, cranking bolts everywhere.

My kid walked in and said, "I can smell your sweat from over here!" I said, "Good! That means it's doing something for me!" I felt like I was 'cheating' by getting a workout in, on a day scheduled for no workout. Imagine that. When a happy cheat is working your ass off and sweating, and I felt like I was getting away with something great.

Once I got it done and moved and stood up where it's to go, I tightened all the bottom bolts. I have to do the top today once I get my ladder from the garage. I didn't want to go out there in the dark... and I need the ladder to replace the light in the garage as well. I'm afraid to try and stand on the chair. I have a nice medium-height heavy-duty sturdy ladder my dad got me.

I got everything that wasn't exercise equipment OUT of the room. I moved the mini fridge over in front of the window, it is just above the bottom sill, and put the water dispenser on top of it. I turned the TV swing arm so it puts the TV in front of the window and happily, the slight bend doesn't show when it's this way, so it no longer looks stupid. My kid got into the spirit with me and cleaned off one of the 72" black wall units in the living room (5-shelf), and I dragged it in and put it next to the window, making one shelf big enough to hold the DVD, VCR, and my MP3 boombox on top of that. I'll put books on the middle shelf and exercise DVDs/VCRs etc. on the top shelf (time to search eBay!) and who knows about the bottom two. It actually looks rather nice, and I have remotes for all the equipment I think I can hang off my exercise bike if I want to watch something while on it.

(The bike is partly disassembled still, awaiting tech support help.)

I had to clean everything in the room, it was like some combination of dust, dirt, fingerprints, and kid-spills maybe?, had just made everything pretty yucky. So that took awhile. I got all the tons of media out that my kid had in there from watching the TV, I put my weights along the wall and my plate tree in the corner, moved the bike a little, and then vacuumed the room probably better than it has been in years. It has a dark red carpet (not MY choice as you might imagine) which highlights every piece of lint, so the difference is dramatic.

It actually looks like a room that someone serious about working out would have. There is still a lot of open floor space in the middle so aerobics with the TV is plenty workable.

I was so delighted with it that I didn't want to leave it. It's unfinished in planning, but feels great aesthetically.

***

This morning I got up at 6:10. I can't remember what I was doing, some wrassling with the covers, but I actually bent my knee and lifted up my leg and moved them and then realized, leg still in the air, that I have not been able to do that for like 10 years. I mean a real 'leg lift' like that. The muscle is just suddenly there. Not that it was super easy, but the fact it was humanly possible at all astounded me.

I got up, drank a high-protein low-carb slimfast and then went into the weights room, and hit the pause button to continue my MP3s... there's 151 songs on there and I haven't worked through them yet. I left the light off, and opened the curtain to the window on the south side... it just faces the non-window'd side of my neighbor's house, no direct light, but it was enough. I wasn't sure what I was going to do.

Thinking about the leg lift in bed, I discovered if I stand facing the cage and hold the the vertical posts with each hand, I can lift each leg up, like pull the knee up so the thigh is nearly horizontal, and then kick it back and up in the air behind me. The fact I could do this once is really incredible. I was able to do ten, granted imperfectly and with momentum helping, but still. I just couldn't believe it. I did it with the other leg. Then I had to sit down on my bench and just ponder how amazing that was for awhile. My legs are HEAVY. That's a big deal!

I got out my bean and did a variety of stretching, and some mild exercise I've been doing I call "froggy-holds" that I suspect is behind the new strength in my abductors (hip muscles). I was able to throw my leg over the bean for the first time (it is extra wide and I was always afraid to try before) and did all the kinds of stretching I could come up with while on it.

I got on the floor (the floor is VERY HARD when you carry a few HUNDRED extra pounds, lemme tell ya!) and managed to do typical side leg lifts, 10 on one side and 8 on the other, before I max'd out. Still. I could not do ONE of these when I tried last January, and that was when I was the same weight as I am now. It's hard as hell getting OFF the floor, but never mind.

I sat on my knees in front of my recline bench and held the seat and did an odd form of nearly-push-up off it till I couldn't anymore. Then I danced around the room like an idiot for awhile just to MOVE. I just honestly felt like I needed to MOVE.

***

I went into the kitchen and made breakfast (3 scrambled eggs and 2 oz soyrizo with a bunch of red pepper flakes) and a diet mountain dew. (I know, I know. WATER!)

I wondered, while mixing it all up, why it is that when I'm drinking slimfast I don't seem to lose weight. Is it too few calories per day? The sodium isn't really that high in them. I know I'm probably sensitive to casein and it has a massive dose of that, that is its source of protein, but it feels like I'm doing ok. I had this gut feeling, not a voice in my head but darn near, "There is no reward for poisoning yourself. Eat real food." I thought gee whiz... my subconscious has a guilt complex about slimfast.

I thought about my workday. I sit on my bed with my laptop computer. This is not quite as unreasonably slothful as it may sound; at my weight, nearly any seat cuts off circulation which is horribly dangerous (my father can't eat anything green ever again, due to his medication for a blood clot, and he is not even overweight), and that bizarre displaced condensed fat-lump in my right inner thigh (which by the way is like 10% the size it was a month ago, yay!) was caused by sitting all this weight on the wrong thing for too long. I finally ended up just sitting up against the wall on my bed, since it's soft, which allows me to happily sit for 4, 8, 12 hours without moving a muscle, I'm so focused, if something doesn't disturb me I don't even realize I need to pee. My kid makes fun of me. "Mom, you're bouncing -- go pee!" then I snap out of it. I move and it sounds like my body is cracking all over.

Needless to say, that is not overly healthy either.

I had this weird desire to STAND and MOVE AROUND today. While working.

I went and redeemed the wire shelf from the living room and put it back in the exercise room, but this against the wall by the door. I put my own laptop on one shelf, my biz laptop on the next shelf, and my external hard drive and DVD/CD drive on the bottom shelf. I can sit in a folder chair and work on the middle shelf.

Or, I can stand, like I'm doing now, and type on the laptop on the top shelf. I plugged them in from the outside so it takes all of 10 seconds to switch which shelf they are on.

Yes, various toes/feet fall asleep if I stand too long, too much weight not to be otherwise, but I can walk around, shift around, and sit when I need to. The chair is not comfortable. GOOD! It makes me stand up and MOVE more.

Today is shoulder day on the weights. That's later.

So I'm not just building muscle. I'm building my room, and seem to be even building new ideas and new behaviors. It's a mystery what I'll be in the end, but I like it already.